Thank goodness for Gretchen, who keeps everything so real in this rather Alice-in-Wonderland-like alternate universe in which we have become ensconced. She reminds me of a character from a 70’s TV show I used to love called “The Munsters.”

        The patriarch was named Herman Munster, and he was a Frankenstein doppelganger, but gregarious and charming. His wife, Lily, was equally warm and gracious, despite her bloodless pallor, long, diaphanous gown with spikey, bell-shaped sleeves and a shock of white that ran the length of her black, waist-length hair.

        Her father, “Grandpaw,” who lived in the haunted-looking dilapidated mansion with Herman and Lily, had fangs, blood-red lips, a pasty complexion and sported black nail polish and a full-length black cape. Although he was acerbic, he was not the least bit scary.

        Herman and Lily’s son, Eddie, had a deep widow’s peak, extra-furry sideburns, and a unibrow, despite the fact that he was only eight years old.

        The only one who could be deemed “normal” by most standards was Cousin Marilyn, who was blonde and blue-eyed, with gleaming, straight, white teeth, dimples, a warm disposition, melodious voice, and model-perfect figure. The Munsters, when she wasn’t in the room, often spoke in hushed tones about “poor Cousin Marilyn.” They felt bad for the unfortunate way she looked.

        That’s Gretchen. She looks absolutely adorable in her everyday shorts and regular top right now. Yet, at this breakfast table, full of “plain folk,” as they’re called – not to mention me in my Amish costume – she is the one who doesn’t fit in. Oh! The stories we’ll be writing when all this is over, and we’ve made it to The International FanStory Convention in Atlantic City!

        Despite the trauma with the horses and the snake just fifteen minutes earlier, Gretchen’s appetite is fully intact. She polishes off a stack of Helene’s fluffy, perfect-looking pancakes-with-apple-butter and regales us with stories about the many albums of pictures she and her husband, Chuck, have of snakes.

        Meanwhile, I can barely get my small bowl of berries-and-cream to slither down to my stomach, even though it seems to be firmly lodged right now in my throat.

        Suddenly, the sound of creaking wooden wheels, co-mingled with shod horses, fills the room. Hannah rushes to the door and yells, “It’s the Yoders!” Then she quickly adds, “And they’ve got Barney and Klem with them!”

        I am at a loss. Gretchen and I exchange quizzical looks.

        “Our runaway horses,” Rebekah says, catching our consternation.

        Hannah opens the door to two gorgeous blonde, blue-eyed girls I’m guessing to be in their older teens, a blonde boy in his mid-teens, and a peppy blue-eyed blonde the same height and stature as Hannah.

        The small girls hug each other enthusiastically the minute they are within arm’s reach.

        “Klem and Barney got scared by a timber rattler,” says Hannah, “and then they broke away from Daede and started running toward the field where Gretchen and Rachelle were. And then Gretchen and Rachelle ran really, REALLY fast to get out of their path. Gretchen was AMAZING!! But Rachelle said she would’ve been faster than Gretchen if she’d had her high heels on and not Aunt Ruth’s work boots. She’s wearing those instead because her high heels got caught in our buggy and she went flying through the air and landed in the mud. She’s wearing those clothes because our goats ate her straw suitcase and all her clothes inside it. She still has her leopard dress, though, but she wears that when she takes a bath in the hot springs. Oh! And she thought the corn cobs in the outhouse were to make her curly hair straighter!”

        “Hannah!” says Helene. “Please let the Yoders come inside!”

        The four stand inside the doorway and stare incredulously at Gretchen and me like we’re escapees from Barnum and Bailey’s freak show contingent.

        Finally, the boy speaks. “Our daede and I heard the horses running, so we took out some oat pails for them, and they came right over.”

        “It worked out well,” the taller girl adds, “since we were coming here this morning anyway to make pastries with you and help with canning.”

        Gretchen and I exchange Wise Eyes as we notice how Solomon’s cheeks have pinked up at the sound of this girl’s voice.

        “Klem knocked Daede to the ground!” Hannah tells them. “And Simeon cut off the timber snake’s head with a hoe!”

        The second sister turns to Simeon and casts him a sidelong smile. Gretchen and I exchange glances again and this time suppress Omniscient Mom smirks as we watch Simeon’s color rise from neck to forehead like a thermometer in a vat of bubbling caramel. Amish or not, teens and hormones are as robust and runaway a commodity as Klem and Barney were not thirty minutes earlier.

        While the menfolk head for the fields, and Helene and the teen girls busy themselves prepping to make jam and pastries for their roadside stands, Gretchen and I are given pails and follow the two younger girls to the berry-picking patches.

        I’ve never seen such a lush, impressive crop! The blueberries are so plentiful and close together that they resemble giant, indigo-colored bubbles of caviar. By now, enough time has elapsed since the horse-rampage trauma that I have finally regained my appetite. In fact, I am absolutely famished.

        It takes a good fifteen minutes before I quell my two-for-me-one-for-the-bucket spree. Finally, I slow down long enough to talk.

        “Gretchen, we need a Plan B,” I say. She is standing on the other side of the bush we are sharing. “Old Reliable is never going to be able to be resuscitated in time to get us to Atlantic City.”

        “I know,” she says like someone who’s just learned her grandma’s been moved into hospice care. “My text to Chuck finally got through, but he wrote back that he can’t get off work to come help us.”

        “Not to worry,” I say. “I’ll call my cousin in Baltimore to see if she’ll bring my car up. She’s newly retired, and I know she’d love the adventure of it all.”

        “Yeah, that reminds me,” says Gretchen. “Where’s your phone? Why haven’t you tried to send texts?”

        “My battery was low when we left my cousin’s house,” I explain. “I’d envisioned being able to charge it in Old Reliable. It never dawned on me that it wouldn’t have a USB port.”

        “Oh, yeah; those were a bit before her time,” says Gretchen with a wry little smile, “being a 2005 and all.”

        We’re quiet a beat, then I ask, “Do you have enough juice left in yours so I can call my cousin,Tova?”

        “I think so. Just don’t mention the timber rattlesnakes to her. I’m betting that would be a deal-breaker,” says Gretchen.

        “S-s-s-s-s-s-s-so true!” I say.

        “S-s-s-s-s-s-s-so unfunny,” retorts Gretchen as I hear a clump of berries clink down into her bucket.

        I know, without question, that the real Cousin Marilyn would’ve found that clever little comment of mine absolutely hilarious-s-s-s-s.

        Amish life has made my fellow FanStorian a little s-s-s-surly.